netherlands

Here and there in Willemstad- you’re going to find these little vans from which they make delicious fruitshakes called batidos : an antillian name for a fresh smoothie. A mix of the fruit of your choice, condensed milk and sugar makes these shakes the best thing drinkwise in all of Curaçao. The healthier option is to skip the condensed milk and sugar, which is almost as good. The best batido place is Anders Shakes in Otrabanda where they make it fast and are also generous with the quantity of each ingredient.. After trying your first you’ll always be craving more, but if you want to spice things up they also make some delicious local food like pastechi and a wonderfully large fresh fruit salad mix. The best fruit you can pick for your shake is hands down Soursop: a fruit that tastes so miraculously good that people keep eating it even though they know it causes brain damage. An excerpt from wikipedia:

The compound annonacin contained in the seeds of soursop is a neurotoxin and it seems to be the cause of a neurodegenerative disease. The only group of people known to be affected live on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe and the problem presumably occurs with the excessive consumption of plants containing annonacin.

Un batido grandi di Zuursak ku lechi i suku pa 5 NAF.

Facts

Payment: Cash, in gulden or dollars.

Prices: small size batido costs ~3.00 Naf, and Naf ~5.00 for the large size.

The majority of the staff in the stalls speak survival English but are fluent in Spanish and Papiamentu.

Your trip to Curaçao will not be complete without the Zuursak/Soursop grandi with milk and sugar.

There was an unexpected airport tax that you have to pay at the airport when flying between the ABC islands which didn’t matter too much but was ust uncomfortable because it came out of nowhere. When on the flight I panicked like a turtle because I remembered that the day before we fly back to Stockholm – we’ve booked a skydive in Aruba. The reality of the fact that I’m paying someone to fly me in a fully functioning airplane and then having me jump from it… wee bit scary.

Some more pictures from Oranjestad. Everything looks like Disneyland because the houses are colorful and filled with imaginititve lines. The houses are like model houses that they decided to make real.

Eagle beach was just a bus ride away and it was a more breathtaking and secluded beach than the one near our place at Palm Beach. It was incredibly windy so we would be standing on the ocean bottom one second and gulp five litres of water the next.